‘Getting on with it’: Women's transitions through life -threatening illnesses

Women's experiences of life-threatening illnesses and their responses indicate that women do not undergo transitions from health to ill health as outlined by contemporary theorists who base their theories on male centered understandings of the body. This is significant given the place of transition or stage theories in the study of thanatology, loss and grief. This project is an inductive study of women's responses to life-threatening illness, treatment and its aftermath, grounded in an array of theoretical and other materials, and the interview testimony of 15 central Canadian women as patient-informants. The project involves the sociology of health and women's health, ample reference to breast cancer in Canadian women, and examines matters of spirituality in relation to life-threatening illness. Results indicated that women's spirituality was most variable through the course of adjusting to a life-threatening diagnosis, drawing into question much that is assumed by transition theories owing to Van Gennep's emphasis on male initiation rites in primitive societies. The conclusion is drawn that transition theories, predictably, do not indicate women's experience, and as much applied social scientific theory emanating from studies of males cannot be generalized to include women.